The Spy Who Wasn't: Pre-Production 01

I'm finally getting somewhere with The Spy Who Wasn't, a farce of mistaken identity and espionage. The script has now been floating around in the void of my hard drive for a fair few months now, but it is only in the last week that it looks like it will be made into a real thing that exists. A scratchy, amorphous homunculus it will probably be, but at least I'll be able to adorn it with a "Hello my name is: Taylor's film" sticker.

We have an excellent cameraman, we have the friends/actors, and hopefully a soundie very soon. Initial location scouting has gone well. I found a bench for our opening scene that is located on a quiet four-way intersection of paths, hopefully elevating a fairly standard opening scene into a impressive feat of choreography and blocking, if we're very lucky. The local cornershop also agreed, rather quickly I might add, to letting us use their premises for the shop scene. I'm not surprised, they must have felt guilty for charging me 90p for a can of lemonade. Fees have not been discussed yet, but I will be handing over some details very soon.

Which brings me on to money in general. When I initially conceived this as my 'first' short film, it was either going to be go hard or go home. Go home was to be myself acting as director, cameraman, and soundie, all with my own rather low-end kit. Suffice to say, we are now going hard instead. It will be exciting to have a proper (skeleton) crew, but it also brings actual finance into the equation. Funding could be applied for, but looking at some of the requirements, I think this won't be a viable route. Especially as I have made a vague commitment to shoot in just over a month. I've sat on this for too long.

It looks like the main drain at the moment will be shooting in Haggerston park. £85 + VAT just to get someone to file the paperwork, and £100 an hour to film in the park. It looks like we're going to be doing a lot of rehearsing of that opening scene. The street scenes will only cost £50 for the whole day, so no too bad in comparison. Then of course there's crew costs. I keep reminding myself that I'll be saving a lot by redeeming my 'years of faithful friendship' coupons and 'I know what you did when we were 16' vouchers to pay for my actors.

Now we just need to a) confirm the budget b) storyboard and blocking c) permits and booking d) rehearse. And a million other things.

#thespywhowasnt #preproduction #production